Richard Wagner's Lohengrin premieres at the Staatskapelle Weimar.

Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, theatre director, essayist, and conductor, best known for his operas—or music dramas, as his mature works came to be called. Unlike most opera composers, Wagner wrote both the libretto and the music for each of his stage works. He first gained recognition with works in the romantic vein of Carl Maria von Weber and Giacomo Meyerbeer, Wagner revolutionised opera through his concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk, whereby he sought to synthesise the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts, with music subsidiary to drama. The drama was to be presented as a continuously sung narrative, without conventional operatic structures like arias and recitatives. He described this vision in a series of essays published between 1849 and 1852. Wagner realised these ideas most fully in the first half of the 16-hour, four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen.

Lohengrin, WWV 75, is a Romantic opera in three acts composed and written by Richard Wagner, first performed in 1850. The story of the eponymous character is taken from medieval German romance, notably the Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach, and its sequel Lohengrin, itself inspired by the epic of Garin le Loherain. It is part of the Knight of the Swan legend.

The Deutsches Nationaltheater und Staatskapelle Weimar (DNT), or German National Theater and Weimar State Orchestra, is the most significant arts organization in Weimar. The institution unites the Deutsches Nationaltheater with the Staatskapelle Weimar. It plays on a total of six stages across the city. All sections of the theater and orchestra periodically give additional guest performances and appear in electronic media.